


Split the Bill

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 01:36:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7146833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryouta’s sure as hell not pleasant, especially not when he’s covering the sink in his skin cream or somehow attracting and growing a mess wherever he goes into Shougo’s tiny, very neat apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Split the Bill

At first, Ryouta starts leaving small things at Shougo’s place—sneakers, a phone charger, makeup brushes. They’re annoying but also one less thing for Ryouta to whine about forgetting (because he always does forget stuff, because heaven forbid he doesn’t have so many specialized things to carry around with him). It’s not like Shougo sees them and is reminded, pleasantly, of Ryouta—as if. Ryouta’s sure as hell not pleasant, especially not when he’s covering the sink in his skin cream or somehow attracting and growing a mess wherever he goes into Shougo’s tiny, very neat apartment.

Shougo had never been much of a stickler about neatness as a kid, but it’s the only way to make the tiny apartment he can just afford comfortably seem a little bit bigger (well, that and not having much stuff, but moving around so much as a kid had taught him about that a long time ago). As long as his papers are stuffed into the desk drawers and his medicine into the cabinet and all the video games are in the unit behind the closed doors, it looks presentable and there’s nothing on the floor or the surfaces so he can lie on the secondhand couch and put his feet up on the coffee table he’d salvaged from the dumpster and pretend he’s living the good life.

Ryouta is the opposite. He’d grown up in clutter, he and his parents and his two older siblings in a huge apartment. His parents had been strict with money, but that never stopped Ryouta from dragging out all the stuff they’d already accumulated and leaving it in a mess. And he still has so much stuff, claims the dozens of face creams are essential for keeping his skin blemish-free and healthy (Shougo delights in telling him in a concerned voice that he thinks he might see a wrinkle somewhere; Ryouta usually doesn’t believe him and as vain and genetically-blessed as he is he probably shouldn’t) and that he needs to wear several different outfits again and that he loses stuff in his apartment so it’s more convenient to just have several copies of some things (the implication being that he can afford it and Shougo can’t, and he doesn’t mean it like that but people with money rarely do and that doesn’t make it feel any better).

And it starts with the small things, but like everything with Ryouta it escalates and soon Shougo’s wading through piles of Ryouta’s clothes on his way to the bathroom in the morning, shoving aside Ryouta’s body wash and lotion for his dwindling bar of soap and stealing some of Ryouta’s fancy shaving cream (not like he’ll notice it’s gone) once he finds it among the other similarly-labeled bottles of stuff, some of which he’s not even sure Ryouta uses in the first place. He idly wonders if Ryouta even has stuff left at his place and then shrugs it off. It’s not as if they go there very often, and he’s not too upset about that. It always makes him a little uncomfortable, even when he’s trying his hardest to fake it, to hang out in Ryouta’s professionally-decorated apartment, that even with Ryouta’s mountains of stuff is so cavernous it doesn’t seem cluttered at all. Ryouta can afford it even though he’s traveling for shoots half the time, and he can afford a mahogany desk and a four-poster bed that he doesn’t even sleep in because he’s always out partying or at Shougo’s when he’s at home. And Shougo hates to admit it but Ryouta’s pretty damn perceptive; there’s no way he doesn’t know. It’s the same reason why he doesn’t usually take Shougo out to fancy dinners (unless some client is comping them and there’s no one else he’d rather go with and, well, Shougo can’t say no to that) and why they don’t go shopping together.

He can’t figure out what Ryouta’s getting at with all this stuff, though. There’s certainly a purpose, maybe since he started he might as well take over Shougo’s apartment and crowd him out of his own place. At least Shougo still has the kitchen, or what passes for a kitchen (half the living room, separated by a shoddy bar where they eat standing up because Shougo can’t justify the price of barstools). Ryouta hates cooking, and even though he enjoys Shougo’s he’s not going to bump into him in the kitchen trying to chat and knock the pot off the unsteady burner. It’s relatively clear, but from his vantage point Shougo can see Ryouta surfing the internet on the couch, wrapped in a blanket that he’d brought over at some point and he looks so damn cozy and at home and kind of cute, actually (only kind of). And, stupid and illogical as it sounds (but stupid and illogical are Ryouta’s hallmarks), maybe that’s what he’s going after, in an underhanded sort of way.

“You want your name on the lease or something?”

Ryouta looks up. He doesn’t look guilty at all, without any of the caught-in-the-act dodgy sheepishness Shougo’s expecting.

“Are you asking me to move in with you, Shougo-kun?”

Shougo drops the wooden spoon on his toe and swears, bending over to pick it up from the linoleum. He can feel his face growing hot, but that’s just from the proximity to the soup on the stove. Does he want Ryouta to move in? He basically has at this point, and it would be nice to have someone else paying half the rent and bills and groceries—and if they saved for a while, they could afford a bigger place, maybe not as big as Ryouta’s is now, but big enough to hold all his crap (which Shougo has no idea how he’s going to try and fit here, but that’s not really his problem right now) and, ew, for him this kind of thinking is downright sappy but it’s given him an answer.

“You’re already living here, dumbass. Pay your way.”

He doesn’t expect Ryouta to break his unwritten rule and come into the kitchen, either, but today is just full of surprises. Ryouta hugs him around the waist, almost pushing him into the stove (the kitchen is too damn narrow).

“You’re so sweet, Shougo-kun.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Shougo.

His neck is hot even before he feels Ryouta’s warm breath on it, before Ryouta kisses it. Shougo turns the burner down; it wouldn’t hurt to make this last a little longer.

**Author's Note:**

> belated haikise day orz
> 
> feedback is always appreciated!


End file.
